Tag Archives: fossils

For decades, scientists have speculated about when exactly the bipedal apes known as Homo sapiens left Africa and moved out to conquer the world. That moment, after all, was a crucial step on the way to today’s human-dominated world. For many years, the consensus view among archaeologists placed the exodus at 60,000 years ago—some 150,000 years after the hominins first appeared.

While digging in his field on Monday, Michigan farmer James Bristle found what he thought was ordinary debris in his field. After digging further, he discovered that what he had found wasn’t a fence post, but bones from a Woolly Mammoth.

Dinosaurs fossils, we’ve all been taught, consist of bone—their flesh, skin, and organs having decayed long ago. But a new discovery might upend that assumption: Scientists have foundevidence of blood cells with the protein intact in eight fossils which were not even particularly well-preserved.